United States Election: Nov 6, 2012 |OT| - Barack Obama Re-elected

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mernst23 said:
If Romney wins the popular vote and loses the EC, the chances of the EC being dissolved for the next election will be the highest ever.
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Well (1), that's not going to happen, and (2), I think Republicans have enough foresight to know that this would fuck them, so no.
 
Voted for Obama solely because I feel he's the less likely to be discriminatory towards certain classes, races, sexes, religions or sexual orientation. Still not satisfied with having to choose between either of these men (I know none of the lesser known candidates are going to win, so I wanted to make sure I vote between the two candidates who actually have a shot), so I basically voted for the person I felt would be less terrifying to have in office.

The local voting was all I really cared about and the only thing that really mattered to me.
 
Jonm1010 said:
And you seem to not understand that voting for Stein is only helping Romney. Which is fine if you understand that.
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No, I don't understand that, because you're assuming I would have voted for Obama.

I WOULD NOT VOTE IF THERE WERE NO THIRD PARTY OPTIONS.

How difficult is that to understand?
 
Stumpokapow said:
The most likely immediate impact without the EC would be candidates campaigning relentlessly in the areas (not states, we'd likely see the operative divisions be either media markets or metropolitan areas) that best exemplify a combination of ideological purity and high overall population. It'd be pretty easy to set up an effort matrix by showing different combinations of the two factors.

You'd assume that Democrats would win hand-over-fist because of the tendency of urban areas to turn out Democratic, but this isn't necessarily how things would play out. The issue dimensions and salience would change significantly without the EC as well--in other words, the positions Democrats currently hold would not be the same as the positions Democrats hold going forward, and same with the Republicans. The emphasis on rural values on the part of Republicans would change. Republicans would try hard to expose new cleavages in society and position themselves on the winning side versus Democrats.

It's difficult to say how the overall representativeness of the final outcome would change and how overall turnout would change, especially over the long-term. And making matters worse, over the long term the impacts of the structural change and the change that would have happened over time anyway will become confused, making it difficult to even measure the change.
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I'd be very interested in seeing a Republican Party that doesn't need to bend over for rural America.
 
Just got back from the polling place. Any recommendations when it comes to watching live results? I don't have cable this time around.
 
notsol337 said:
If a vote for Jill Stein "steals" from Obama and counts for Romney... does a vote for Johnson count as a vote for Obama?
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Less so. The way to calculate this is as follows:

- Imagine a map of political ideologies. You might pick the left->right political spectrum. You might pick a 2d map. You might choose certain issues to view as germane and certain issues to view as irrelevant. The actual geometry at play here is unimportant. Just pick a map where you feel comfortable mapping everybody in a representative way.

- Situate all of the candidates on the map.

- Situate yourself on the map.

- When you vote, you want to vote for the candidate who has the least overall distance from you on the map. For example, if you share 100% of your issues with Gary Johnson, he's at the same place as you on the map. The distance from you and other candidates depends on the issues you feel are important and the way you drew the map, right? And it's possible that, for example, Mitt Romney is 50 units north-east from you and Barack Obama is 55 units north-west and Jill Stein is 85 units south-west. You can rank candidates from least far to most far.

- Imagine that every voter for a given candidate does this. All of them. You go talk to all of Gary Johnson's voters. Now, if the map is truly representative, those voters are going to be fairly clustered. And if Johnson is a perfect match, then he's going to be at the exact midpoint intersecting all of those voters. In practice, there's going to be some level of imperfection.

- The candidate who votes are being "stolen" from--again, I do not accept this language--no one deserves votes and no one steals votes--is the candidate who is closest to the mean voter of the third-party candidate. So if you believe that most Gary Johnson voters would have picked Mitt Romney second, on average, you believe Gary Johnson is "stealing" votes from Mitt Romney. If you believe they would have picked Barack Obama second, on average, you believe Gary Johnson is stealing votes from Barack Obama.

- Again, don't use the steal language. A vote for Jill Stein negatively impacts Barack Obama, it benefits Romney, and it is vote splitting. You could even use syphoning. But stealing implies she didn't deserve it or he did and that's not how things work :p
 
Good lord, what's with all the democrats in here fear mongering their "If you don't vote with us, you vote against us" line. No wonder there is never any change. Both major parties are equally as vile.
 
mernst23 said:
If Romney wins the popular vote and loses the EC, the chances of the EC being dissolved for the next election will be the highest ever.
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Oh, I see what you're trying to say.

Stumpokapow said:
The most likely immediate impact without the EC would be candidates campaigning relentlessly in the areas (not states, we'd likely see the operative divisions be either media markets or metropolitan areas) that best exemplify a combination of ideological purity and high overall population. It'd be pretty easy to set up an effort matrix by showing different combinations of the two factors.

You'd assume that Democrats would win hand-over-fist because of the tendency of urban areas to turn out Democratic, but this isn't necessarily how things would play out. The issue dimensions and salience would change significantly without the EC as well--in other words, the positions Democrats currently hold would not be the same as the positions Democrats hold going forward, and same with the Republicans. The emphasis on rural values on the part of Republicans would change. Republicans would try hard to expose new cleavages in society and position themselves on the winning side versus Democrats.

It's difficult to say how the overall representativeness of the final outcome would change and how overall turnout would change, especially over the long-term. And making matters worse, over the long term the impacts of the structural change and the change that would have happened over time anyway will become confused, making it difficult to even measure the change.
Click to expand...

Good post - I suppose it would be impossible to predict the dynamic of voter cleavages. Whatever standard we have established with the EC as a truly representative body of the electorate, though, is not without some credible criticism.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Less so. The way to calculate this is as follows:

- Imagine a map of political ideologies. You might pick the left->right political spectrum. You might pick a 2d map. You might choose certain issues to view as germane and certain issues to view as irrelevant. The actual geometry at play here is unimportant. Just pick a map where you feel comfortable mapping everybody in a representative way.

- Situate all of the candidates on the map.

- Situate yourself on the map.

- When you vote, you want to vote for the candidate who has the least overall distance from you on the map. For example, if you share 100% of your issues with Gary Johnson, he's at the same place as you on the map. The distance from you and other candidates depends on the issues you feel are important and the way you drew the map, right? And it's possible that, for example, Mitt Romney is 50 units north-east from you and Barack Obama is 55 units north-west and Jill Stein is 85 units south-west. You can rank candidates from least far to most far.

- Imagine that every voter for a given candidate does this. All of them. You go talk to all of Gary Johnson's voters. Now, if the map is truly representative, those voters are going to be fairly clustered. And if Johnson is a perfect match, then he's going to be at the exact midpoint intersecting all of those voters. In practice, there's going to be some level of imperfection.

- The candidate who votes are being "stolen" from--again, I do not accept this language--no one deserves votes and no one steals votes--is the candidate who is closest to the mean voter of the third-party candidate. So if you believe that most Gary Johnson voters would have picked Mitt Romney second, on average, you believe Gary Johnson is "stealing" votes from Mitt Romney. If you believe they would have picked Barack Obama second, on average, you believe Gary Johnson is stealing votes from Barack Obama.

- Again, don't use the steal language. A vote for Jill Stein negatively impacts Barack Obama, it benefits Romney, and it is vote splitting. You could even use syphoning. But stealing implies she didn't deserve it or he did and that's not how things work :p
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Like I said in a previous post though, non action is an action in itself. A map point has to be put up for not voting as well - meaning it negatively impacts no one.
 
TheNatural said:
1) It's not nice for people to tell me how to vote, tell me I should have stayed home, or say my vote is more wasted than anyone elses either.

2) Maybe the Green Party won't hit 5% nationally, but I can try, and my vote goes a lot more to the ways of that percentage that the large percentage Romney will win this state by.

3) And also, maybe Stein isn't building a base on her back, but any vote for the Green Party lets it continue as an entity in the future where another candiate can come forward in the party for the future. Maybe it's not established as a real contender, but it's at least established as a party that is on a large amount of ballots in states - moreso than any other third party I believe. Simply existing on its own merits is hard enough. Ask the Reform Party about that after Perot left politics and they dissolved.
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Here's a quick thought experiment. List for me the major influences the green party has achieved in the mainstream since 2000? List for me their level of identification amongst Americans?

Now list for me what the tea party has achieved since 2008? And the level of identification amongst Americans?

One has essentially revolved around a top down approach to building their party by way of presidential elections and the other has been built ground up. Which has seen more success and national legitimacy in their methods?
 
Update from MI, first instance of voters being turned away. Did my canvassing this morning.



Yes, lawyers are already there. Just so no one freaks out(too much, we still should freak out)
 
I'm more than happy to have third party candidates run for president to help expand the ideological boundaries and issues covered in the process but the presidential election is a job interview at the end of the day and I'm casting my vote for who I feel is best qualified to do that job, of the available applicants. One of the more significant metrics for qualification is how well the candidate runs their campaign and gathers genuine interest and support for their positions and general candidacy. If they never manage to drum up any more than low single-digit support for their candidacy, then that's a major failing in terms of job qualifications. It doesn't bode well for their ability to govern a diverse constituency with enough flexibility and to manage foreign affairs and relations with enough respect from the international community.
 
The Mana Legend said:
Both Republicans and Democrats do some pretty shitty and shady stuff, there's no denying it. The two party system ruins elections.
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I just can't accept equality in vileness. The Republicans do abhorrent things quite a bit more often.

Democrats would need to be running underground dog fighting rings for that scale to equal out even a little.
 
Shambles said:
Good lord, what's with all the democrats in here fear mongering their "If you don't vote with us, you vote against us" line. No wonder there is never any change. Both major parties are equally as vile.
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Cant even begin to think how someone could think this is true.

Yes, lets base the quality of a political party on what people post on a message board. Sounds like a great standard of measurement.
 
Shambles said:
Good lord, what's with all the democrats in here fear mongering their "If you don't vote with us, you vote against us" line. No wonder there is never any change. Both major parties are equally as vile.
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here we go again with this bullshit.

is obama planning to nominate SCOTUS justices that will overturn Roe v Wade (of which there will likely be 3 spots opening in the next 4 years)?

didn't think so.
 
Arment said:
I just can't accept equality in vileness. The Republicans do abhorrent things quite a bit more often.

Democrats would need to be running underground dog fighting rings for that scale to equal out even a little.
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Or murder Americans with drones. That'd never happen though.
 
kaching said:
I'm more than happy to have third party candidates run for president to help expand the ideological boundaries and issues covered in the process but the presidential election is a job interview at the end of the day and I'm casting my vote for who I feel is best qualified to do that job, of the available applicants. One of the more significant metrics for qualification is how well the candidate runs their campaign and gathers genuine interest and support for their positions and general candidacy. If they never manage to drum up any more than low single-digit support for their candidacy, then that's a major failing in terms of job qualifications. It doesn't bode well for their ability to govern a diverse constituency with enough flexibility and to manage foreign affairs and relations with enough respect from the international community.
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Now tell me about how two applicants (and their pals) conspire to keep the other applicants out of three of the interviews.
 
Jonm1010 said:
Here's a quick thought experiment. List for me the major influences the green party has achieved in the mainstream since 2000? List for me their level of identification amongst Americans?

Now list for me what the tea party has achieved since 2008? And the level of identification amongst Americans?

One has essentially revolved around a top down approach to building their party by way of presidential elections and the other has been built ground up. Which has seen more success and national legitimacy in their methods?
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Well Green Party has 135 elected officials at the local levels in the US:

http://www.gp.org/elections/officeholders/index.php

That's pretty respectable compared to any other third party.
 
CNN really has turned into a garbage network. Three minutes of show, three minutes of ads, three minutes of show, three minutes of ads, repeat ad nauseum. Have they repealed the laws on how much advertising you can show in an hour?

Plus non-stop partisan hacks for interview subjects, with softball irrelevant questions from the show hosts.
 
Juancho9 said:
I didn't vote today because I actually don't give a shit, I deal with whatever happens. That reasonable?
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General opinion is so long as you don't bitch later. I'm not suer how valid that is, though it'd look pretty bad if you bitched about how things were, then failed to vote next time rather than taking it as a lesson.
 
A lot of people do not understand that while voting is democracy, it is not political activism.

When you go vote for president, or any office where the two major parties are reasonably close in size and third parties are orders of magnitude smaller, you are presented with exactly two choices. No matter what you do, no matter how much you want it to be different, you will be making one of those choices more likely, and the other one less likely. Of these two choices, one will be closer to your personal policy desires than the other.

If you vote for the one closer to you, you will make the one closer to you more likely.

If you vote for the one farther from you, you will make the one farther from you more likely.

If you vote for a third party, you will make the one closer to you less likely.

If you don't vote at all, you will make the one closer to you less likely.

It doesn't matter how much you don't like it and want a different system, the math does not care. You will, whether by action or inaction, make one of these two options more likely, and the other one less likely. That's the American ballot box.

You are not voting for your political conscience, or to change the system, or any of that activist stuff. You are simply making a choice between the two policy platforms that have been presented on the ballot. One will be closer to your policy preferences than the other. Your vote will not change what is put on the ballot, or how the votes are counted, or how the electorate in general shifts.

You're just choosing one of two policies, of which only one will be implemented.

That's democracy.

But it's not activism.

Political activism is where all the hard work is. Activism is where OWS, the LGBT movement, and the Tea Party live. Where they go out, make noise, protest, run primary candidates, get on TV, make ads, donate, blog, tweet, and all the rest. That is the ONLY thing that changes what you see in those two choices in the final ballot. Obama didn't start talking about wealth inequality because some people cast protest votes or stayed home in 2010, OWS forced him to do that. Romney didn't drive farther and farther right because some people voted for Constitution party candidates, the Tea Party made him do that. Voting doesn't make politicians do anything. When they lose, they turn around and start planning for the next election by finding ways to appeal better to the people who are making all the noise. When they win, they listen to the people who make all the noise to avoid losing popularity. The only thing the votes do is choose which of the two gets a turn to implement policy.

Getting in the face of politicians en masse and telling them what you want is how you get them to start doing what you want. It's public, and messy, and hard. Voting on the other hand, is private, simple, and easy. You either pick the policy that's closer to you, or the one that's farther from you. Nobody's going to know how you voted, and nobody's going to care. Your political self image and opinions on the system are utterly irrelevant to the fact that you will end up either pushing in one policy direction, or the other, like it or not.

So get your priorities straight, and stop trying to make "statements" when you're behind the voting curtain, and start making them out in the open, at a protest, canvassing for a primary candidate, in a letter to your congressman, or however else you can get in their damn faces. Try to change what's on the ballot before you get it, instead of just showing up and voting to void what progress has been made just because you don't like how it works.
 
TheNatural said:
Like I said in a previous post though, non action is an action in itself. A map point has to be put up for not voting as well - meaning it negatively impacts no one.
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Not really. Remember, we're talking averages here, not individuals. Non-voters are persuasion challenges -- presumably they have policy goals, after all, they just don't see either candidate appealing to those goals. There is probably still some candidate that is closer to you than the other candidates, and your choice not to vote due to their failure to appeal to you removes some fraction of their mandate.
 
Brak said:
CNN really has turned into a garbage network. Three minutes of show, three minutes of ads, three minutes of show, three minutes of ads, repeat ad nauseum. Have they repealed the laws on how much advertising you can show in an hour?

Plus non-stop partisan hacks for interview subjects, with softball irrelevant questions from the show hosts.
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I at least give them credit for having hacks from both sides.
 
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